Joshua Lovette, Student at Appalachian State University
When writing its important to know your audience and adapt to their needs, by controlling your style and tone. When communicating with your superiors or with customers, your tone more formal and respectful. Communication is a people skill an art if you will how to get information from one point to anothe "http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/15?e=mclean-ch01". The article previously listed discuss communaction, as an activity an art, as well as how it affects human knowledge. The article also discus the tone, both formal and informal. While this article is a little dry it is informative, the tone can be considered a mesmerizing tone as it tries to paint communication through the ages in a playful tone.
However, with close friends and colleagues the formal tone would sound cold and distant. In the next few paragraphs I will discus business communication in modern United States, as well as how to adapt and relate to business professionals. There are five guideline which are important to set the conversational tone of a message.
It's important to keep in mind that most business's aim for a conversational style that is warm but business like. To achieve this we must follow the five guidelines, the first one seems to be commonsense; however, in our technology driven world, you would be shocked how much people send emails, assignments, and letters in a text format with text language. I myself have done this several times, however when we are at work or sending in class assignments we must remember we cannot write like this as business professionals.
In conversational emails we must remember to avoid stale and pompous language, according to the book most companies shy away from outdated phrases such as, "attached please find" and "please be advised that" just to name a few. Similarly, we need to avoid using obscure words, stale words, and clichéd expressions.
The third guideline, is avoid preaching and bragging. Most readers to get annoyed and irritated by know-it-alls, who like to brag and preach. Its important not to come of like this, to your boss, employees, or your customers. However, if you fell the need to remind your audience, or readers something that should be obvious, try and work it in the information. In the middle of the paragraph somewhere, this way it will sound like a secondary comment rather than a major revelation.
Business messages should generally avoid intimacy, you don't typically want to share your personal life's details with your boss or your employees. For the most pat we want to keep intimacy out of the work place. This can make you look to casual and have an unprofessional tone. However, there are some exceptions to this, if you have a close relationship with the audience, such as a close knit team, a more intimate tone is appropriate and sometimes expected. You would not want to use an intimate tone on your first day at work. However, if you have been working and dealing with the people for a while and you become close, then an intimae tone is perfectly acceptable.
Humor and the work place, can be a good and positive thing. However, in writing professional emails especially email, letters, and messages its best to avoid using humor; because, humor can easily backfire, and divert attention away from your message. The book says "If you don't know your audience well or your not skilled at using business humor don't use it at all." I disagree I don't think that humor should be used in professional messages at all unless you know your audience really well. The statement that the book does make which I agree wit is that we should avoid using humor when were communicating across cultural boundaries.
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